F & F - the forgotten auto manufacturer

 

F & F  - a forgotten auto manufacturer

One of the United States’ largest automobile manufacturers in the decades of the nineteen fifties and sixties - from 1950 through 1967 - was based in Dayton, Ohio.  Readers are forgiven if they are not familiar with the name of F & F Mold & Die Works Incorporated because the vehicles they manufactured were made of plastic and only 3-1/4 inches long, but in 1991, an article in the Dayton Daily News pointed out that “at one time F & F made more plastic Fords than the automaker.“    

German emigres John and Joseph Fiedler came to the United States in 1927 and founded Fiedler & Feidler (later shortened to F & F) Mold & Die Works in Dayton Ohio in 1938 in a shop behind the family home at 34 Pierce Street in Dayton. By 1942, the busy with war work, the company moved into a two-story building at the corner of Sachs and Pruden Streets also in East Dayton.  

Joseph’s son, Otto Fiedler, who was born December 1919 in Nuremberg Germany, graduated from Fairmont High School in Dayton then attended Harvard College on a scholarship and  graduated in 1940 in the same class as a young man named John F. Kennedy. Otto came home to Dayton, registered for the draft and studied sculpture at the Dayton Art Institute.    

After he graduated from the Art Institute in 1942, he entered the military and during World War II Otto served in the U.S. Army counter-intelligence division. In 1946 he returned home to Dayton and oversaw the installation and start-up of F & F’s three new plastic injection machines in the new facility at 103 Sachs Street in East Dayton. At first, the company manufactured imitation tortoise shell plastic purses, but the following year they made plastic refrigerator dishes and ice cube trays.  

In that era, many food consumers purchased a boxed product then sent an order form on the package together with a small amount of money to redeem for a special premium item. In 1947 on the hunt for new business, F&F attended food industry trade shows and displayed a line of plastic premiums for buyers’ consideration.

At one trade show, a representative of the Quaker Oats Company asked Otto if F & F could design and manufacture an Aunt Jemima themed item that could sell for about 50 cents. F & F eventually made 16 million of Otto’s Aunt Jemima syrup pitchers, the first of many Aunt Jemima themed items that F & F made through the years.   

The company also manufactured large and small plastic novelty salt and pepper sets, sugar and creamer sets, spice holders and cookie jars.  Later the company found a niche making novelty plastic mugs that pictured Roy Rogers, Mr. Quaker, Tony the Tiger, Yogi Bear, Dennis the Menace, the Flintstones, and many more for General Mills, Post Cereals, Kool-Aid, and Quaker Oats.

F & F Mold and Die Works entered the scale automobile cereal premium business with plastic cars wrapped in cellophane that were larger than model railroad HO (1/87) scale and smaller than model railroad O scale (1/43). Their debut premium car, for the Kellogg Company, was a 1950 Ford four door sedan with a magnet cemented inside on the underside of the roof. The car rode on white wheels and tires with metal axles.

For 25 cents and the mail-in proof of purchase card, customers received a metal ring and a Ford Sedan in one of three colors – orange, yellow or blue. The idea was that the ring attracted the magnet, and allowed the user to move the car without touching it, although over time, the magnet often became separated from the car.  The same car without the “Ford” logo on the hood, and sans the ring and magnet was offered in blue and red in 1951.

With its business growth, F & F rented second-floor warehouse space in a building on Pine Street in Dayton.  All the Pine Street inventory was destroyed by fire in September 1951. Four young neighborhood boys admitted to playing with matches which started the fire which destroyed $54,000 of F & F inventory and cost the life of one Dayton firefighter, Clarence Dunkman, who died on the scene of a heart attack. 

During this period, F & F Mold and Die Works rented an old tobacco warehouse in Verona Ohio, northwest of Dayton, and expanded its manufacturing operations. The Verona facility grew to employ nearly 100 workers working three shifts at its peak in 1955.

F & F offered a huge product line in 1954 for Post cereal with both Ford and Mercury toy automobiles, with ten cars total in each of seven different colors which simulated the real car colors. The Ford models included the Thunderbird convertible, Crestline Sunliner, Victoria and 4-Door Sedan, the Customline Club Coupe, and the Ranch Wagon.

The F & F four-car 1954 Mercury line included the XM-800 Dream Car (prized by collectors), and the Monterey 4-Door Sedan, Sports Coupe and Convertible. Joseph Fiedler, Otto’s father and one of the founders of F & F passed away in March 1954 at only 56 years of age. Otto and his uncle John carried on with management of the F & F Mold and Die Works. 

For 1955, F & F manufactured five different 1955 Ford premium cars – the Thunderbird convertible, Fairlane Crown Victoria and Sunliner convertible, Customline 2-Door Sedan, and the Country Sedan Wagon, each in one of five colors.

In 1956, the Post cereal premiums moved away from cars with Ford tractor cabs and five varieties of Fruehauf trailers - freighter, moving van, tanker, gooseneck, and flatbed. The trucks and trailers came in four different colors appeared on the scene with either black or white wheels. The rigs came in four colors - orange, red, yellow and aluminum. F & F also manufactured two styles of Greyhound busses, both cast in blue and two styles of boats in five color-and-white combinations. 

In 1957 F & F created and built five new Ford models. The Ford Custom 300 2-Door Sedan Fire Chief are and the Ford Country Sedan Wagon Ambulance came in red only.   The rest of the 1957 Ford F & F lineup - the Custom 4-Door Sedan,  Fairlane 500 Town Victoria, Fairlane 500, and the Fairlane Sunliner  came in one of seven colors which mimicked  real Ford colors - Coral Sand, Dresden Blue, Inca Gold, Cumberland Green, Colonial White, Silver Mocha, and Flame Red.  

For 1959, there were only two cereal premium models - the Ford Thunderbird hardtop or the convertible which F & F manufactured in six colors - Raven Black, Brandywine Red, Cordovan, Flamingo, Starlight Blue (nearly black), and Glacier Green. Instead of a mail-away premium, the Thunderbird cars came packaged inside the cereal boxes.

During 1959, the Food and Drug Administration enacted new consumer safety rules which prohibited packages of food items from containing premiums with metal parts.   F & F changed the design to white plastic one-piece wheel and axles in order to comply with the new rule. The other big change in 1961 was that the cars were not Fords but Plymouths.  The three models offered were the Fury Convertible and Sports Coupe, and the Suburban Station Wagon, each one of six different colors.

F & F returned to building Fords in 1961 with three Thunderbird models – the Sports Roadster, the convertible and hardtop, each in one of five colors. In December 1962 F & F suffered another disastrous fire, this one at the Sachs Street facility which Fire Department investigators determined was caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette by one of the company’s twenty-five employees.  The company lost a majority of its inventory and suffered production delays as it took four months to rebuild the facility.

1966 F & F produced three Mustang models for Post cereals. The convertible, hardtop, and GT 2+2 fastback were offered in just three colors - Springtime Yellow, Arcadian Blue, and Signal Flare Red. F & F completed its automobile manufacturing in 1967 with the Mercury Cougar in one of six colors with black instead of white wheels.  

For 1969, Post Cereals switched suppliers - from F & F to the John V. Zimmerman Company of St. Louis, Missouri.  “JVZ” built four models of Mercury cars - the Cougar Hardtop, Cyclone CJ Fastback, Maurader X-100 Sportsroof and Marquis 4-Door Sedan - in six different colors with black one-piece wheels and axles.  

In 1973 Otto Fiedler suffered a massive heart attack while on vacation in Germany and became the eleventh person in the world to receive a battery powered heart pacemaker which lasted for five years before Otto underwent a replacement procedure.  

John Fiedler passed away in 1983 at age 82 which left Otto solely in control of F & F.  In June 1985 as the company approached being sold, F& F suffered another fire at Sachs Street, which destroyed the warehouse and finishing side of the facility. 

The Dayton Fire Department determined defective wring as the cause of the fire.  After the facility was again rebuilt, Otto sold the business and retired in 1987 to his home in suburban Kettering then passed away in 1989 at age 69.  

In 2020, more than fifty years after the last car shipped, the F & F Mold and Die Works building still stands at 103 Sachs Street in Dayton Ohio and F & F cars and trucks have an active collector community.